This invention relates generally to a method of communicating with a plurality of sets of users.
Current wireless systems, most notably 802.11 wireless local area network (xe2x80x9cWLANxe2x80x9d) systems, operate in half-duplex mode on a single frequency. That is, the mobile stations in a wireless system either transmits or receives at any given time, not both simultaneously. Further, the mobile stations typically operate on a single frequency. Once a mobile station is on a frequency, it stays on that frequency.
A problem with today""s wireless systems is that they only serve one group, where a group is a set of mobile stations with common characteristics. In the broad case, groups can be large classes of users. Examples of two different groups are city workers and public safety users (e.g., police personnel, fire personnel, or the like). In the technical configuration of the system, and specifically in the case of a WLAN access point (xe2x80x9cAPxe2x80x9d), the common set of technical characteristics includes frequency, service set identifier (xe2x80x9cSSIDxe2x80x9d), and associations.
To serve multiple groups with existing technology requires multiple APs, which is typically not economically feasible. Further, multiple APs in close proximity exhibit interference issues, which non-deterministically decreases the throughput to both APs (in the best case), and may make the APs completely unusable (in the worst case).
Thus, there is a need for a method to allow multiple sets of users, which may or may not have common characteristics, to communicate with a common AP.